Welcome to Jared Kushner’s World

The only real puzzle of Jared Kushner’s trip to Iraq is which particular Trumpian political vice it best illustrates.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DOMINIQUE A. PINEIRO / DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE / REUTERS

In a sense, there was nothing surprising about the surprise trip to Iraq that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, made this week. It can’t come as a shock, at this point, that anyone in the Trump Administration thought it was a good idea to send a neophyte to a war zone, or to bypass normal diplomatic procedures, or to turn a fight in which American troops are at risk and Iraqi civilians are being killed by errant air strikes into a venue for familial posturing. The trip wasn’t even technically a surprise, since White House officials, in a flouting of security procedures, confirmed the visit before Kushner had landed in Baghdad. The Trump team, with its acute sense of victimhood, surely ought to have realized that a member of the President’s immediate family would be a tempting target in a war zone; perhaps it figured that the American and Iraqi militaries would dispatch so many troops to guard him that there was nothing to fear, for Kushner, at least. Whether announcing his imminent arrival might have put those ordinary soldiers at even more risk does not seem to have occurred to the White House. Indeed, the only real puzzle of the Kushner trip is which particular Trumpian political vice it best illustrates: deluded self-aggrandizement or a callous indifference to other people’s lives; conflicts of interest or a lack of any interest in the consequences of the use of power.

Is the question whether Trump really thinks that Kushner has the competence and the ability to manage the portfolio he has dreamed up for him—bringing peace to the Middle East; monitoring the fight against ISIS; overhauling the federal government; serving as an intermediary with China, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and even Canada—or whether he even thinks that competence matters? On Monday, when Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, was asked how Kushner could handle it all, he answered, “He has a team that he oversees.” Asked if he might offer a hint as to the composition of Team Jared, Spicer, after a stumbling reference to an emissary and “a bunch of those folks” in the Office of American Innovation—who would help Kushner in yet another project, the battle against the opioid epidemic—gave up and said that there would be “different people” for “different parts.” Many jobs, many people, many parts: a prismatic Jared-orama.

Kushner had gone to Iraq, Spicer said, at the invitation of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who “believed it was an opportunity” for the President’s son-in-law. Spicer, drawing himself up, added that it was “an opportunity that I think every government official and every member of the media should, frankly, take advantage of if offered that opportunity,” as if reporters, in failing to appreciate Kushner’s diligent use of motorcades, were themselves morally remiss—war-zone-sightseeing slackers. The repeated use of the word “opportunity” is jarring, and not only because it turns American troops into tourist attractions. The word also echoes the explanation that Hope Hicks, the White House’s director of strategic communications, gave the Times last week for Ivanka Trump’s decision to disregard concerns about nepotism and profiteering and become an official White House employee: it would afford her “increased opportunities to lead initiatives driving real policy benefits for the American public that would not have been available to her previously.” The list of opportunities not previously available to Ivanka, given her background, is short indeed, but one might concede that unelected and unaccountable political authority is not on it. Still, it’s not clear why the chance for personal growth that turning government agencies into playthings affords the Kushners is being presented as a matter of public welfare. Ivanka’s purview does not seem to extend to moderating her father’s stance on climate change, judging from last week’s executive orders. Jared was already on the books as a senior adviser; Ivanka will be a special assistant. The financial-disclosure forms that the Kushners filled out in order to take these jobs indicate that their assets are worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars, and possibly much more. (The Trump era has brought out a flaw in the disclosures: they only ask for a range of values, and some of the categories top out at fifty million or more.) One wonders if we will be asked to admire their luck or their cleverness if, in the course of the Trump Administration, that number somehow multiplies.

Somewhere along the line, Kushner may have to find time to talk to Senate investigators looking into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. Last week, the White House confirmed that, during the transition, Kushner met with Russia’s Ambassador to the United States and then, in a follow-up, with the head of Vnesheconombank (a financial institution for which “Vanish Economy” might be a useful mnemonic), who is close to Vladimir Putin. The Trump Administration has portrayed these meetings as a routine part of Kushner’s work: forming connections, sizing up interlocutors. But when the Times asked Hicks whether Kushner and the Putin banker had talked about, say, removing sanctions, she claimed that nothing so serious had come up: “It really wasn’t much of a conversation.” Is it ever, with Kushner?

What it comes down to, in other words, is that Kushner’s portfolio is either a sham of one variety or the other—a sop to his ego, a cover for business contacts, a label for things that Trump has no intention of dealing with at all—or the President has put matters critical to national security into his son-in-law’s hands with the expectation that he will act on them. In Iraq, after all, Kushner did meet with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, and whatever he said will be taken, in some sense, as a message. Similarly, Kushner played an actual role in the plans for Trump’s meeting, later this week, with China’s President, Xi Jinping, whose far-more-experienced team doubtless sees Trump’s inexperience as an opportunity. There is no non-dangerous option here, even if the main hazard is to our country’s political self-respect. The reports on Kushner’s dealings often observe that foreign dignitaries take his role seriously precisely because it is, in many less-than-democratic nations, a familiar one: the autocrat’s extended family acting as a substitute for the institutions of state and, in the process, corroding their legitimacy. As Evan Osnos notes, Xi himself rose to power in part because he was an important man’s son. Should the life of Jared be a surprise, just because this is America?

Amy Davidson Sorkin is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.